Among the many things the modern Republican party gets wrong is this: the notion that there’s no such thing as bad publicity. In other words, there’s another Republican presidential candidate debate tonight.

Tonight’s debate is about the economy. Now you may be thinking Wasn’t the last debate about the economy? Yes, it was. But nobody tunes in to watch these GOP candidates debate. They tune in to 1) see the candidates bark at Hillary and 2) to see them bark at each other. People tune in for the same reason they watch NASCAR races on television; they want to see the accidents.

The notion that’s there no such thing as bad publicity has been around for a while. Oscar Wilde, who knew a thing or two about publicity, said “The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.” But it was the brilliant and gloriously intoxicated, Brendan Behan who said “There’s no such thing as bad publicity except your own obituary.”

Vote for Oscar Wilde

But ask yourself this question: Why did Wilde and Behan make that claim? Actually, you needn’t bother to ask yourself that question, on account of I’m going to tell you why. This is why: Wilde and Behan actually had something intellectually substantial to say.

If either of those guys did or said something scandalous, it would draw people to look at their work. And that was a good thing for this reason: their work was serious. They might have been entertaining and said outrageous shit, but they were serious when it came to doing their work. Their work had substance and weight.

No, not this guy

That’s just not true of the people who’ll be on the debate stage tonight. The candidates who are actually leading in the polls are the ones who are completely lacking in serious work. Ben Carson and Donald Trump aren’t just political lightweights, they’re totally weightless. Policy gravity has no effect on them. Carson, for example, wants the U.S. to give weapons to the Ukraine in order to keep Putin “on the run.” And Trump? He wants to build an actual, physical wall along the Mexican border. These aren’t policies; they’re the plot lines of bad movies.

The GOP candidates who actually have policies — folks like Rand Paul or John Kasich or even the Jeb! — are tanking in the polls, hovering in the low single digits. Admittedly, the policies they promote are bad policies, but they’re actual policies. But the reason their poll numbers are so wretched isn’t because they have bad policies; they’re tanking because they’re wasting their time coming up with policies at all. The modern GOP just isn’t about policies or governance.

Not this guy either.

Over the last couple of decades the Republican party has devolved into three groups. There are the folks who are filled with frustration and fear and rage, and all they want to do is howl at the moon. Trump voters, in other words. And there are the folks who want to shut their eyes, shut their minds, shut their borders, and hope Jeebus will save them. Carson’s folks. And finally, there are those Republicans who are actually interested in running a government based on conservative economic and social principles. There are probably some of them left, but nobody pays them any attention.

So tonight will be more bad publicity for Republicans. And even though there will be some discussion of who won and who scored points and who pissed the bed, it won’t really matter. In the end, it’s just noise.

The only hope any of those fuckwits have in next year’s election lies in promoting apathy among the voters and suppressing the votes of those who care enough to go to the polls.

Vote for Brendan Behan

Me, I’d rather vote for Oscar Wilde or Brendan Behan. Even though they’re dead.

Back in July Bernie Sanders said folks need to “stop shouting at each other” about gun control legislation. A few weeks later, in a speech, he said this about gun control: “[P]eople shouting at each other is not doing anybody any good.” Earlier this month Bernie said that as a nation we need to “get beyond the shouting” when it came to gun legislation. And at the first Democratic debate, he said this:

“As a senator from a rural state, what I can tell Secretary Clinton, is that all the shouting in the world is not going to do what I would hope all of us want, and that is keep guns out of the hands of people who should not have those guns and end this horrible violence that we are seeing.”

And hey, Bernie’s right. Shouting at each other does more harm than good. Once the shouting starts, brains shut down.

Last Friday, while speaking at the Democratic National Committee’s Women’s Leadership Forum, Hillary Clinton said this:

“I’ve been told to stop — and I quote — shouting about gun violence. Well, first of all, I’m not shouting. It’s just that when women talk, people think we’re shouting.”

And hey, Hillary’s right. Women who take a strong position on a subject — almost any subject — and speak forcefully about it, are often accused of shouting and being ‘hysterical’. Well, more accurately, women are usually accused of shrieking. It’s a tactic intended to keep women quiet.

Her comment has created something of a fuss. The news media have turned this into a Hillary versus Bernie story. He said this, she said that, and it becomes all about the spat. Any actual difference in their policy positions on gun safety gets lost.

Did Bernie accuse Hillary of shouting? No, he didn’t, not directly. But during the debate, his comment about shouting was aimed at her. Did Hillary accuse Bernie of being sexist? No, she didn’t, not directly. But her comment about being told to stop shouting was aimed in his direction.

Here’s the thing: they’re both mostly right. Bernie’s comments about people who shout failing to communicate are germane, though there was no need for him to mansplain it to Hillary. Her comments about women being accused of shouting are spot on, though it’s inaccurate to suggest Bernie is sexist. Bernie tends to be blunt — which is usually a good thing, though certainly not the best default approach for a politician who needs to get things done. Hillary tends to be politic — which is great for diplomacy, but isn’t necessarily completely honest.

It’s completely fair for each of them to find fault with the other’s position on gun policy. And the news media would be right to report their different positions. But instead they’ve opted to turn a policy difference into a personal spat.

That’s not news. That’s gossip.

So I’m chatting with a friend, right? About all sorts of stuff, including U.S. politics. And he says to me, he says “I won’t vote for Hillary. It’s Bernie or nobody.”

So I smile, because I think he’s just being dramatic. But he says, “No, I really mean it. If Bernie isn’t the Democrat’s nominee, I just won’t vote.” I politely suggest maybe he’ll change his mind if it comes down to, say, Hillary versus Marco Rubio. Because c’mon, Rubio? But again he says, “No. Fuck it, let Rubio or Trump or whoever fuck up the country. Then maybe people will get motivated to vote for a true progressive.”

I say, “Yeah, but dude? You’re willing to tank the economy? What about poor folks? What about all those wars Republicans want us to fight? What about immigrants and old folks? Dude, what about the fucking Supreme Court?” And he says, “Fuck it. If they wreck it, they’ll own it.” And I’m like “Yeah, they wreck it, they own it. But we’ll still have to live in it.”

We go back and forth for a bit, and he allows there’s one other Democrat he’d consider voting for. Elizabeth Warren. I’m like, “Dude, she’s not running.” He says, “She should.” And I say, “Yeah, maybe she should. But she’s not.”

And that’s when I realize that my friend is living in a Bizarro Liberal Tea Party world. His approach almost exactly mirrored the conservative Tea Party. Ideological purity above all. Operate the government the ‘right’ way or burn it all down. That’s really a pretty fucked up approach. Look at where it got the Republicans. They’ve become a Balkanized political party. The modern GOP is a disorganized collective of small, quarrelsome, ineffective, suspicious, mutually hostile groups. Those fuckwits aren’t only incapable of governing, they’re incapable of being governed.

Let’s not do that to the Democratic party.

My friend says he’s tired of voting for the lesser of two evils, and I totally understand that. It’s discouraging. But the operative term there is lesser. If you refuse to vote for the lesser of two evils, then I think you’re fucking stupid and petty.

I have problems with Hillary. I have problems with Bernie. But they’re nothing like the problems I have with ALL of the Republican candidates. I told my friend I was probably going to join Team Bernie for the Iowa caucus. He said, “Probably? Probably?”

Yeah, probably. Because every so often Hillary does something that makes me lean in her direction. Like her response to the latest development in the Patriot Coal bankruptcy case. I’m going to take a wild guess here and say you probably haven’t paid a lick of attention to Patriot Coal. I’ve written about them before, and you can read that here. Basically, Patriot Coal is a subsidiary of Peabody Energy; it was almost certainly deliberately designed to go bankrupt. But before it went bankrupt, Peabody transferred the costs of the health care and retirement benefits of former coal miners to Patriot Coal. Patriot could go bankrupt, the miners would lose most of their retirement and health benefits, and it wouldn’t have any effect on Peabody.

That’s pretty shitty behavior, even for a coal company. But it gets worse. The bankruptcy court set aside something like US$22 million to help the retired miners. Patriot Coal is attempting to get the court to use $18 million of that money to pay for lawyers fees. Seriously, that’s fucked up on about nine different levels.

This is an issue that almost nobody knows about. It’s not a national election issue. It’s an issue for maybe ten or eleven thousand retired miners, mostly living in West Virginia. But Hillary spoke about it. She issued a statement on Patriot Coal. It wasn’t very widely reported; it wasn’t really considered very newsworthy. But Hillary was aware of the issue and took a stand. She took a stand for miners who almost certainly won’t vote for her (West Virginia voted for Romney by nearly a 2-1 margin). I suspect Bernie would agree with Hillary on this. But I don’t really know, because I haven’t been able to find any news report in which he’s commented on it.

I’m still probably going to caucus for Bernie. But I like Hillary. And any Bernie Sanders supporters who tell me they won’t vote for Hillary if she wins the nomination can go fuck themselves.

By the way, this morning Patriot Coal withdrew their request that lawyers fees should come out of the miners’ retirement benefits. Nobody will probably notice. It won’t have any effect on Hillary’s election chances.